When a retained email is 'sent' from one to another, the email appears perceptually the same as a normal email to the receiver, except that it will appear no larger than, say, 100 bytes in his/her account because only a reference to the email is actually received. The content of the email is stored in the sender's account. Those who benefit from retained email are: A) people who sign up to newsgroups but don't want their email account to explode, B) people who send photos via email but aren't sure how much space is available in the receiver's email account, but are quite sure how much space is available in his/her own account, and C) people who want to retract or edit what they just sent.
-- tongpoo, Jul 17 2003

Internet Mail 2000 http://cr.yp.to/im2000.html
similar idea here. [tongpoo, Oct 04 2004]

So you post the message on the net somewhere, and e-mail a link to it. I'd say that's pretty baked.
-- angel, Jul 17 2003


It will be different because the contents will be private, it will be seemlessly integrated, and easy to write a retained email (just check a checkbox before sending it). I suppose it will be easiest to implement for email exchanges within the same server - for example between a yahoo account and another yahoo account.
-- tongpoo, Jul 17 2003


You say that "only a reference to the email is actually received", while the "content of the email is stored in the sender's account." In other words, the content is "on the net somewhere" (as I said) and what is received is "a link to it" (also what I said). The contents will still be private (the link I send you might be "www.mydomain.com/kjzufysbgcnf" which no-one is likely to find by chance). As to it being seamlessly integrated, it's trivial to write an application which, instead of attaching a file, FTP's it somewhere and simultaneously inserts a link to it in the outgoing message.
-- angel, Jul 17 2003


Usually this is implemented with something like a GUID in the querystring of the link to the email (or whatever content) held on a remote server, and/or with log in credentials required to view the content. Very baked, as angel points out.
-- custardlove, Jul 17 2003


Sorry for the confusion. Where I said "account," I should have specified "email account." The content is stored in the sender's email account, and it will look just like a normal email to the receiver - the receiver won't have to click and visit somedomain.com because it will seem like an ordinary email. Also, all that the sender would have to do is click a checkbox to make it a retained email, as opposed to creating a new account at somedomain.com.

(Thanks Mr Burns, weren't sure which tags were allowed.) I think this will help the layman who doesn't want things to be too complicated. The concept is as trivial as the one-click buy thing at amazon.com, but I haven't seen one yet in existance.
-- tongpoo, Jul 17 2003


As long as the receiver can get html e-mails, it's pretty easy to send some really short html code that points to a block of text on the internet. To the reader, it would look like an ordinary e-mail.
-- Freefall, Jul 17 2003



random, halfbakery